White Rose Books in downtown Holyoke isn't just a bookstore

Betty Kaplowitz, seated, and Kristen Bachler recently opened the White Rose, a social justice bookstore at 284 High St. in Holyoke.Patrick O'Connor

By PATRICK O’CONNOR
Special to The Republican

HOLYOKE - When covering a story, you sometimes have the easy ones. These stories take shape during the interview. Before you even get to your computer, you know how you want to start. You’ve already selected the quotes you want to use. The ending was thought out during the ride home.

When you sit at the keyboard, you can just write and the words just flow and the images just come and the story is over before you know it. Just like that. Easy.

This was not one of those stories.

This is the type of story that leaves the writer with the question: How do I start? There’s so much; there’s too much. What do I include? What do I leave out? This is the type of story that leaves the writer sitting there in front of a white page thinking, how am I going to write this?

This is a story about a bookstore. It’s a tiny place located in downtown Holyoke, called the White Rose. Sounds easy, but here’s the problem: It’s not just a bookshop.

Sure, it has all the charm and comfort of a bookstore. Just inside, there are two circular wood tables facing a glass-windowed facade where you can sit, read, daydream and people watch as passersby walk down the main street in downtown.

Inside a little farther are the bookcases, tall ones, filled with classic books by writers like James Baldwin, popular novels by contemporary authors like Junot Diaz and counterculture reads by activists like Angela Y. Davis.

And, if you walk deeper in among those bookcases, you can find a nook where you can retreat and disappear into words, as you should in any bookstore.

But if only the White Rose was so simple, so easy to describe. If only it was just a bookstore.

“When we fell in love with Holyoke, we thought what is Holyoke missing,” owner Betty Kaplowitz said of when she and Kristen Bachler moved here about five years ago.

“A place for coffee, reading and meeting,” said Bachler, who also owns the store.

They sat in their bookstore at 284 High St. Certainly, conversation comes easy with the two women. About 20 minutes into our interview, talk meandered around local and national politics, gentrification in downtowns, the ethnic mix of this reporter (Irish, Spanish and Lebanese), social justice documentaries and gay pride movements.

The bookstore – which was the reason for this interview – was often just a backdrop, a comfortable setting for a good talk. And this is one of the purposes of the store: to further such good talks.

In fact, the owners organize “topic talks,” in which people meet to discuss a topic.
“It’s very informal,” Kaplowitz said.

Recently, they had a talk entitled, “Why do we still need to march,” about gay pride marches. Incidentally, Kaplowitz and Bachler organized the first gay pride parade in downtown Holyoke this year. They also host poetry readings and film nights. A recent showing was on the film “Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition.”

“We are trying to make it so the place is still open when we are closed for the day as a bookstore,” Kaplowitz said.

Juan Santos was sitting at one of the tables, listening and joining the conversation. He said he met the two women at the recent pride march. He now stops in at the bookstore at least once a day, he said.

“Besides being able to talk to two great ladies, the store itself opens up a space where people can learn about different social justice topics,” he said.
To get a sense of the social justice aspect of the store, you need to pause at the name: White Rose.
“I really wanted the name to mean something,” Kaplowitz said.

The White Rose was a resistance group in Nazi Germany that used pamphlets and graffiti to speak out against Hitler. The group was made up of students, many of whom were once entrenched in Nazism themselves but saw the error of their ways and decided to fight against fascism.

Eventually, the Gestapo arrested them and the activists were executed, but not before their message spread outside of Germany. “It seemed as if this is what we believed in doing,” Bachler said of the bookstore’s larger purpose to spread the message of equality and fairness.

As the owners spoke, people walked in off the street. The store is located in the nerve center of downtown Holyoke, a couple of buildings down from City Hall, a block up from the courthouse, around the corner from the library. It is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 2 to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

On the local level, Kaplowitz and Bachler are trying to boost downtown’s economy, too, and they are planning a meeting with local businesses owners. “We are trying to get businesses on High Street to stay open after 5,” Kaplowitz said.

Yet, when you put aside the bigger mission and the local work, the White Rose is simply a good bookstore.